'Selma' director DuVernay to make Hurricane Katrina feature film

LOS ANGELES, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Ava DuVernay, the director
behind the Oscar-nominated Martin Luther King Jr. biopic
"Selma," will write, produce and direct a feature film set in
the time of Hurricane Katrina, the company backing the film said
on Monday.

David Oyelowo, who plays King in "Selma," is in talks to
co-produce and star in the film, described by Participant Media
as "a sweeping love story and complex murder mystery," set
during the time of the 2005 hurricane that slammed into the U.S.
Gulf Coast and deluged the city of New Orleans after levees
broke.

DuVernay, the first African American woman nominated for a
Golden Globe for directing, was hired by Participant Media,
which was founded in 2004 by billionaire and former eBay
President Jeff Skoll to produce entertainment programming that
inspires social change.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after she was
passed over for an Oscar nomination for best director, an
exclusion that fueled a debate over the lack of diversity in
this year's Academy Awards nominations.

"Selma," a $20 million movie from Paramount Pictures, did
secure a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

"Ava DuVernay has shown herself to be highly skilled at
bringing intimacy and contemporary urgency to epic events,"
Jonathan King, Participant's executive vice president of
narrative film, said in a statement.

Katrina has not featured widely in the film world,
especially in feature form. Director Spike Lee made the
documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,"
which aired on HBO in 2006.

DuVernay said the story "will explore the complexities of
intimate relationships within times of chaos, while also
examining the chaos itself."
(Reporting by Mary Milliken; Editing by Bernadette Baum)